The latest batch of manufactured outrage on the left has been produced by the Mike and Karen Pence profile that revealed some tools Mike uses to live out his marital vow of faithfulness. As Anika Smith wrote here at The Stream:

Mike and Karen Pence abide by a version of the Billy Graham Rule. In a 2002 interview, then- congressman Pence said he doesn’t drink without his wife present, nor does he dine alone with other women.

This common-sense rule stands out in a town like DC, where many, many marriages have fallen apart because of affairs.

As Smith’s piece pointed out, feminists on social media looked for ways to cast the Pences’ mutually agreed upon rule for their marriage as dehumanizing for women. Or something.

Are the women who mock the Pences for their marital plan ready to talk about Bill and Hillary’s arrangement?

It amazes me that the same secular relativists who will defend any sexual fetish will presume to remark on the details of a marriage. Aren’t both of the Pences “consenting adults”? If fidelity is their kink, who are we to judge?

And wasn’t it just five minutes ago that the same feminists were outraged that Donald Trump did not take steps to be faithful to his pre-Melania wives? That he acted and talked like a “player”? Morality changes so quickly on the left that it’s difficult to keep up.

Take the Survey, Girls

In fact, it’s really hard to believe that any woman who has ever been in love with a man genuinely objects to the Pence Plan. To test that out, I created a little Twitter poll, which appears below:

https://twitter.com/JZmirak/status/847515109492736000

Any woman who actually felt “triggered” when she read about the Pences owes the rest of us her answer.

Of course, the response I expect instead is the typical feminist “audible eyeroll.” Then a lengthy and testy insistence that those aren’t the only options. Who am I to say that women need to pick among those four alternatives? “There you go again, limiting women’s options and depriving them of agency … just like you want to limit their reproductive health care options!”

The proper response to that, of course, is the line I’ve used before on college campuses: “Oh, I’m not really pro-life. I’m anti-choice. Life is cheap, and they’re only babies. I just want to restrict women’s reproductive health care options.” That ends the conversation, every time.

If I worked at a godless or a Jesuit college, or a big, timid corporation, I might expect to be summoned to Human Resources with a complaint from a nameless female co-worker that my Twitter poll made her feel “unsafe.”

There is No Fifth Option

The truth is that those four choices are exhaustive. You have to pick one. Just so, each man must pick which road he will travel down. In the moral life nothing is fixed. You are always in motion toward goodness and health or sin and sickness, till your last dying breath.

Mike Pence has clearly taken the measure of himself, and determined what he needs to do to keep his sexuality within the bonds of a loving marriage. For a handsome fellow in a position of power, his rules seem sane and sensible. They bespeak a man who knows the reality of temptation, who loves his wife and their marriage enough to take the simplest steps to protect them.

In the moral life nothing is fixed. You are always in motion toward goodness and health or sin and sickness

Male sexuality is a real thing, with a genuine shape that differs from the feminine variety. (Though both sexes clearly cheat, and women must stay on guard as well, as Chelen Vicari sagely notes.) The male sex drive is a force of nature, made strong for good biological reasons, and tainted (like everything else) by the Fall. Like anger, ambition, acquisitiveness, or any other drive it must be controlled. Or it controls us.

Or You Could Marry Bill Clinton

Which brings us to Option B, Bill Clinton. Are the women who mock the Pences for their marital plan ready to talk about Bill and Hillary’s arrangement? You know, where Bill cheats with weaker, poorer women, then bullies and blackmails them into silence with his wife’s sullen consent and active support?

I bring this up not solely to mock and humiliate the Clintons on a deeply personal issue. Bill Clinton could be the picture in the dictionary next to “Piggish Male Behavior.”

If a powerful man (like the governor of a state, or a vice president) wants to treat women this way, he will not be short of takers. But lesser men can get away with it too — as the tens of millions of single moms in America could testify. The generation of fatherless kids who are growing up today would back them up.

As grateful as they were that Bill was solidly pro-abortion, I don’t think most feminists would choose the Clinton option.

Carlos Danger Signals

Am I saying that if a man doesn’t take steps like Mike Pence, he will end up acting like Bill Clinton? No.

He could act like Anthony Weiner — humiliating a young and beautiful wife by dragging his sex drive through the bottomless online sewers of pornography and “sexting.”

There is plenty a man can get away with and get addicted to online without ever meeting a stranger in the flesh. I don’t think I need to spell this out, or to point out how damaging that can be to a healthy marriage. Skeptics can ask poor Huma.

So feminists won’t pick Weiner.

Pray for Bruce Jenner. Don’t Imitate Him, Even a Little

If they’re true to their theories, feminists would surely choose Bruce Jenner. Set aside the mental illness which drives the poor man to such gross extremes as dosing himself with dangerous drugs, humiliating his children and camping around in drag.

What feminists really claim to want from men is a milder version of Jenner: Someone who suppresses, beats down, and denies what it means to be a man. Who internalizes the guilt that feminism sprays men with like a firehose. And yet who (like Jenner) is somehow still attracted to women. A tame man, a damaged man, a man who is no threat at all.

At least that’s what feminists think they want. In fact, they’re probably secretly more attracted to Clinton. They’d be better off with Pence. What they’ll end up with is Weiner.

Who said that there’s no justice in the world?